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My 10 favorite Linux distributions of all time, ranked

Jack Wallen / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Linux is on the rise. I believe the popularity of the open-source operating system will continue to increase and possibly even hit the 10% mark by the end of 2025. Some say that's a pipe dream, but I believe. Because of the popularity of Linux, I thought I would create a list of my all-time top 10 distributions that I've used over the years. Some of these distros are no longer with us, while some of them are still thriving. Are you ready to take a

Mathematics for Computer Science (2024)

Course Description This course covers elementary discrete mathematics for science and engineering, with a focus on mathematical tools and proof techniques useful in computer science. Topics include logical notation, sets, relations, elementary graph theory, state machines and invariants, induction and proofs by contradiction, … Show more

Trump’s AI Action Plan Is a Crusade Against ‘Bias’—and Regulation

On Wednesday, the Trump Administration unveiled its new artificial intelligence action plan geared at keeping US efforts competitive with China. With over 90 policies recommended, it’s a wide-ranging document that, if followed, would give Silicon Valley’s most powerful companies even more leeway to grow. “We believe we’re in an AI race,” White House AI czar David Sacks said on a call ahead of the action plan’s release. “We want the United States to win that race.” The Office of Science and Tech

Apple now allows app developers to show retention offers when users try to cancel a subscription

Apple is expanding the capability of its In-App Purchase framework with a new retention messaging API. This means, for the first time, developers will be able to show offers to users when they go to cancel a subscription in the global Subscriptions screen inside the Settings app. Apps will be able to show a simple static message, display dynamic progress based on the user’s app state, or present a special offer to try and dissuade the user from cancelling their payment altogether. For instance

Apple and Google singled out under new UK Digital Markets regulation

Battersea Power Station is home to Apple's UK headquarters Apple and Google can now add the UK to the ever-growing list of countries and regions ramping up regulatory scrutiny. Here’s what happened. Apple and Google designated as having ‘strategic market status‘ The UK is gearing up to start enforcing its new Digital Markets, Competition, and Consumers Act (DMCC), a law aimed at reining in dominant tech platforms. And today, as reported by CNBC: “(…) the Competition and Markets Authority p

How to turn off ACR on your TV (and why you shouldn't wait to do it)

Adam Breeden/ZDNET Did you know that whenever you turn on your smart TV, you invite an unseen guest to watch it with you? These days, most popular TV models utilize automatic content recognition (ACR), a form of ad surveillance technology that gathers information about everything you watch and transmits it to a centralized database. Manufacturers then use your data to identify your viewing preferences, enabling them to deliver highly targeted ads. Also: Your TV's USB port is seriously underut

Reverse engineering GitHub Actions cache to make it fast

Before this work began, we already had a faster alternative to Github Actions cache. Our approach was different: we forked each of the popular first-party actions that depended on Actions cache to point to our faster, colocated cache. But my coworkers weren’t satisfied with that solution, since it required users to change a single line of code. Apart from the user experience, maintaining these forks steadily turned into a nightmare for us. We kept at it for a while, but eventually reached an in

I'm Unsatisfied with Easing Functions

I'm unsatisfied with easing functions You've probably encountered easing functions before. If you're a creative coder, you've likely heard of them or used them. If you're a user, you've certainly interacted with them. They're everywhere, and they give a little more life to computer generated animations. Taking it easy For the uninitiated: let's say you've got a circle that you want to move from left to right over the course of a second. We can conceptualize this by converting the time into pr

US agency responsible for nuclear weapons was breached in Sharepoint hack [U]

More than 10,000 organizations around the world are at risk from hackers after a serious security flaw was discovered in Microsoft’s popular Sharepoint platform, used to store and share confidential documents. The majority of companies at risk are said to be in the US. Update: Bloomberg reports that the National Nuclear Security Administration was among the organizations breached – see the end of the piece … Microsoft said that there were “active attacks targeting on-premises servers.” US fede

Are we witnessing the final days of Mozilla?

50% off Monthly, Yearly Subscriptions! Lifetime Subs for $100! Let's get everyone subscribing to The Lunduke Journal! The number of free subscribers to The Lunduke Journal has absolutely exploded — across a bunch of platforms — which is truly amazing. The real Tech News is spreading farther than ever. In fact, the free subscriber growth is so utterly massive, that if even a tiny fraction of you became a paying subscriber… The Lunduke Journal would become comfortably financially set for a very

Show HN: Header-only GIF decoder in pure C – no malloc, easy to use

I built a lightweight GIF decoder in pure C, ideal for embedded or performance-critical environments. It’s header-only, zero dynamic memory allocations, and fully platform-independent. Supports both static and animated GIFs, with turbo and safe decoding modes. Works great on microcontrollers, IoT devices, and anything with a framebuffer. Would love feedback or ideas where this could be useful. Github: https://github.com/Ferki-git-creator/TurboStitchGIF-HeaderOn...

I Played ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ on Mac and It Feels Perilously Close to PC Gaming

Cyberpunk 2077 strode like a solo cyberninja onto MacBooks with the kind of swaggering bravado you’d expect from a chromed-up Night City merc. Knowing you can run CD Projekt Red’s graphically intense game, even if not at the peak ultra settings, is a mark of how well the device plays AAA titles. In case you missed it, Cyberpunk is now on Mac, and I’ve tested it on a plethora of Apple’s M-series laptops from the last few years. The good news is it’s playable, but for many Apple fans, this will be

Mixture-of-recursions delivers 2x faster inference—Here’s how to implement it

Want smarter insights in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get only what matters to enterprise AI, data, and security leaders. Subscribe Now Researchers at KAIST AI and Mila have introduced a new Transformer architecture that makes large language models (LLMs) more memory- and compute-efficient. The architecture, called Mixture-of-Recursions (MoR), significantly improves model accuracy and delivers higher throughput compared with vanilla transformers, even when constrained by th

TapTrap: Animation‑Driven Tapjacking on Android

TapTrap is a new type of attack targeting Android devices. It allows an app without any permissions to misuse screen animations. This app can secretly open another screen, such as a permission prompt, and make it invisible. The attack can then be used to trick you into performing sensitive actions, such as granting camera permissions or even erasing your device, without your consent. The idea is simple: imagine you’re using an app. While you use it, it opens another screen, such as a system pro

Amazon is acquiring an AI wearable that listens to everything you do

Amazon's latest move in the AI space is an acquisition. The company is purchasing a startup called Bee, which makes a wearable and an Apple Watch app that can record everything the wearer says. Amazon said that the deal has not closed and that the terms of the acquisition are confidential. Although the company did not provide specific numbers, it added that all Bee employees received offers to join Amazon. TechCrunch first reported this news based on a LinkedIn post from Bee founder Maria de Lou

You can use GitHub from your Watch – GitWrist

GitWrist ⌚ Meet GitWrist, a project for WearOS which allows devices to interact with the GitHub API to get information such as the users recent notifications and stats. This was designed to be a fun project, the code is NOT for production and is a total mess, but feel free to download the app, it's a work in progress About ℹ️ This project is made using Jetpack Compose and written in Kotlin, and relies on the Github API, which also uses a GitHub OAuth app to sign you in. App Features 🚀 Link

The Must-Have Exclusives From San Diego Comic-Con 2025

In just a couple more days, pop culture will descend on the San Diego Convention Center as SDCC prepares to dazzle us for another year (if everyone didn’t stop releasing their trailers before their panels, that is). But of course, among all the big news and astonishing cosplay, there’s going to be tons of fantastic merch to get your hands on exclusive to Comic-Con. Here’s our guide to some of the absolute coolest on offer. 100% Soft Galactus Vinyl SDCC is taking place during Fantastic Four: Fi

Open-source MCPEval makes protocol-level agent testing plug-and-play

Want smarter insights in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get only what matters to enterprise AI, data, and security leaders. Subscribe Now Enterprises are beginning to adopt the Model Context Protocol (MCP) primarily to facilitate the identification and guidance of agent tool use. However, researchers from Salesforce discovered another way to utilize MCP technology, this time to aid in evaluating AI agents themselves. The researchers unveiled MCPEval, a new method and open-so

Pixel 10 Pro XL renders leave us wishing for more fun Pixel 10 colors

TL;DR Renders of the Pixel 10 Pro XL have just arrived to join recent leaks of its smaller siblings. The color lineup for the Pixel 10 Pro XL matches what we just saw from the 10 Pro, to little surprise. Sadly, none of these options are anywhere near as bold as what we’re getting from the Pixel 10. Google’s next smartphones formally debut in under a month, and based on the breakneck pace new information about these phones has been arriving over the past couple days alone, it’s looking like we

Topics: 10 just options pixel pro

LSM-2: Learning from incomplete wearable sensor data

Training and evaluation We leverage a dataset with 40 million hours of wearable data sampled from over 60,000 participants during the period from March to May 2024. The dataset was thoroughly anonymized or de-identified to ensure that participant information was removed and privacy was maintained. Subjects wore a variety of Fitbit and Google Pixel smartwatches and trackers and consented for their data to be used for research and development of new health and wellness products and services. The

Asymmetry of verification and verifier's law

Asymmetry of verification is the idea that some tasks are much easier to verify than to solve. With reinforcement learning (RL) that finally works in a general sense, asymmetry of verification is becoming one of the most important ideas in AI. Understanding asymmetry of verification through examples Asymmetry of verification is everywhere, if you look for it. Some prime examples: Sudoku and crossword puzzles take a lot of time to solve because you have to try many candidates against various c

Today's NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for July 23, #773

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today's Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles. Today's NYT Connections puzzle has a fun purple category. Look carefully at some of the words and see if you can break them into smaller words. Need more help? Read on for clues and today's Connections answers. The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle.

Today's NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for July 23, #303

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today's Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles. Today's Connections: Sports Edition made me hungry with a food-themed category. The blue category might be tricky for some folks, but you should be able to sort out the rest without too much trouble. Keep reading for hints and the answers. Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, makin

Asymmetry of Verification and Verifier's Law

Asymmetry of verification is the idea that some tasks are much easier to verify than to solve. With reinforcement learning (RL) that finally works in a general sense, asymmetry of verification is becoming one of the most important ideas in AI. Understanding asymmetry of verification through examples Asymmetry of verification is everywhere, if you look for it. Some prime examples: Sudoku and crossword puzzles take a lot of time to solve because you have to try many candidates against various c

Apple Intelligence news summaries are back, with a big red disclaimer

Apple has released the fourth developer betas of iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26 and its other next-generation software updates today. And along with their other changes and fixes, the new builds are bringing back Apple Intelligence notification summaries for news apps. Apple disabled news notification summaries as part of the iOS 18.3 update in January. Incorrect summaries circulating on social media prompted news organizations to complain to Apple, particularly after one summary said that Luigi M

Apple alerted Iranians to iPhone spyware attacks, say researchers

Apple notified more than a dozen Iranians in recent months that their iPhones had been targeted with government spyware, according to security researchers. Miian Group, a digital rights organization that focuses on Iran, and Hamid Kashfi, an Iranian cybersecurity researcher who lives in Sweden, said they spoke with several Iranians who received the notifications in the last year. Bloomberg first wrote about these spyware notifications. Miaan Group published a report on Tuesday on the state of

Disney World Is Shutting Down One Part of Its ‘Star Wars’ Experience

Another Walt Disney World attraction will be making way for something new at Hollywood Studios. Star Wars Launch Bay will be closing down for good and will be replaced by The Magic of Disney Animation. The Disney Parks Blog news follows the final days of Muppet*Vision 3-D and the courtyard closure to begin construction for the new Monsters Inc. Monstropolis area and attraction. The Launch Bay area has been overdue for some sprucing, and really, once Galaxy’s Edge opened, its days were clearly n

California backs down to Trump admin, won’t force ISPs to offer $15 broadband

A California lawmaker halted an effort to pass a law that would force Internet service providers to offer $15 monthly plans to people with low incomes. Assemblymember Tasha Boerner proposed the state law a few months ago, modeling the bill on a law enforced by New York. It seemed that other states were free to impose cheap-broadband mandates because the Supreme Court rejected broadband industry challenges to the New York law twice. Boerner, a Democrat who is chair of the Communications and Con

iOS 26 beta 4 adds new Dynamic option for iPhone wallpaper

iOS 26 beta 4 is available now, and the public beta is expected soon too. Besides adding more liquid back into the Liquid Glass design, the new beta also introduces a new Dynamic wallpaper option. Here are the details. Dynamic wallpaper changes colors automatically in iOS 26 beta 4 Like it does every year, Apple has a new default iPhone wallpaper coming in iOS 26. The new default added several different color options in the last beta, too. You can choose from: Dusk Halo Shadow Sky Most o